If you have some time today, I found James Fallows’ interview of Taylor Branch, Martin Luther King’s biographer, fascinating. He’s just released a book that picks out 18 key moments from his three-volume King biography, and it’s also been released in an e-book edition that includes audio and video content for each of those events. He traces the current Tea Party anti-government rhetoric back to the segregationist politicians of King’s era, talks about LBJ getting short shrift, especially about his reformation of the Democratic party and the kind of political courage it took to do that, and also a bit about college sports.

No, it’s possible to praise LBJ for the very significant work he did on Civil Rights — putting real teeth in JFK’s moderate civil rights bill and ramrodding it through Congress, pushing through the Voting Rights Act and the Fair Housing Act, working closely with King, Farmer and others (which they themselves acknowledged was key) — and at the same time blame him for the escalation in Vietnam.

Thanks for the video of this interview. It’s well worth the hour, every bit of it. As one who came of age during the 60’s and in the South, I am sharing this with all friends and family, even if some of them are of the opposite political persuasion. They may not listen to it, but they darn well should.

His MLK books should be required reading in schools. He does try to cram too much stuff in and it can be difficult to sort out who is doing what when, but, they are a definitive retelling of an important time. One of my favorite passages:

“Because of the persistent rumors of race trouble, the Dean of students went ahead of them. He took up a post outside the station, from which he directed the herd of students toward the colored waiting room. All obeyed him except two, Blanton Hall and Bertha Gober. They broke away to go “cleanside”, which was the local Negro slang for entering the white waiting room.
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A policeman quickly approached Hall and Gober in the line at the white ticket counter and said, “you’ll never get your ticket there.” The two students asked why, nervously and politely standing their ground. A detective laid the groundwork for arrest by advising them that their presence was “tending to create a disturbance,” and when they still did not move from the line, Laurie Pritchett ordered them to jail.”

[A couple of nights later the arrested students were invited to a prayer meeting at a local church. By this time 3 other students had also been arrested. The Minister asked them to tell their tale. Taylor Branch…]

“One by one they spoke, with the last student to the pulpit being Bertha Gober, a diminutive young woman with the small voice of a child, She described the arrest, her jailers, the sordid details of her cell. “I felt it was necessary to show the people that human dignity must be obtained, even if through suffering or maltreatment,” she said, “…I’d do it again anytime…After spending those two nights in jail for a worthy cause, I feel I have gained a feeling of decency and self-respect, a feeling of cleanliness that even the dirtiest walls of Albany’s jail nor the actions of my institution cannot take away from me.”

The trembling simplicity of her speech washed over the audience. “There was nothing left to say, Sherrod wrote. He and everyone else were reduced to tears, including the “hard, grown men.”